Lots of legendary New York clubs were born in 1970s: CBGB on the Bowery, Studio 54 west of midtown, Paradise Garage on King Street.

But lets not forget Plato’s Retreat, the notorious swingers’ club that epitomized the free-sex atmosphere of pre-AIDS New York.

Opened in 1977, Plato’s Retreat held court in the basement of the then-crumbling Beaux Arts Ansonia Hotel on Broadway and West 74th Street.

Management laid out strict rules: No gay men, couples only (though women could have sex with each other), no drugs, no booze.

Celebrities indulged in orgies with regular joes and janes from the suburbs. A “mat room” was for exhibitionist sex. Clothes were optional. Guests could bump uglies in the disco, the Jacuzzi, and the huge swimming pool.

Of course, it wouldn’t last long. In 1980, Plato’s Retreat moved out of the Ansonia to a much bigger space at 509 West 34th Street. Owner Larry Levenson went to prison for tax evasion in 1981.

And then AIDS hit the city. Mayor Koch ordered the health department to shut down gay bathhouses as well as straight sex clubs like Plato’s Retreat. By 1985, it was over.

This torn, faded anti-littering poster is still adhered to a beam between the F and G tracks at the Seventh Avenue station in Park Slope.

“Litter Is a Hazard Here” it reads, an arrow pointing to the tracks. Apparently, riders decades ago were just as likely to toss trash on the tracks as riders are today.

The sign is part of a series of “Subway Sun” messages first launched by the IRT in the teens, according to this Princeton University Library blog, which also provides a little backstory and images of other Subway Sun posters.

New York has never had a shortage of photographers chronicling the city’s moods and moments.

But Saul Leiter’s 1940s and 1950s color photos are something else, even among his New York School contemporaries.

Born in 1923, Leiter came to New York from Pittsburgh. With no training, he made a living shooting fashion magazine spreads.

On his own, he walked the streets with his camera—often an expired roll of color film inside, which created pictures with muted colors.

He captured fluid fragments of otherwise unremarkable city life that make haunting, unsentimental images.

[At left, “Yellow Scarf,” 1956; above, “Frank’s Pizza,” 1952]

In a 2009 interview with Photographers Speak, Leiter responded to a comment about his work representing the alienation of the city with this:

“I never thought of the urban environment as isolating. I leave these speculations to others.

“It is quite possible that my work represents a search for beauty in the most prosaic and ordinary places.

“One doesn’t have to be in some faraway dreamland in order to find beauty. I realize that the search for beauty is not highly popular these days. Agony, misery, and wretchedness, now these are worth pursuing.”

This enchanting postcard features a moonlit Herald Square looking up Broadway, with the elevated tracks and tall office buildings and stores glowing from within.

And then there’s an image of a Roman Chariot race in the background, all lit up majestically in the night.

A gigantic display of light that went up in 1910, it was used by a variety of advertisers over the years, according to the American Sign Museum:

“In 1910, the great chariot race sign in New York City was one of the most famous electrical displays in the world. Erected on the roof of a seven-story building overlooking Herald Square, it featured a Roman chariot race and the sign was composed of 20,000 bulbs of different colors, 70,000 connections and 2,750 switches.

“The simulated movement of horses, drivers and whips was accomplished by 2,500 flashes per minute and the sign attracted crowds every night for years. The erection of an intervening building ended its period of use by a series of advertisers.”

Lovely and peaceful, isn’t it? I have no clue what block in today’s Gravesend this location would correspond to. But Gravesend Bay extends into lower New York Bay, and that’s either Staten Island or New Jersey in the distance.

Over the years, I’m sure countless New York streets have been worthy of this title.

But in the 1960s, two stretches of Manhattan held the crown.

In 1962, journalists gave it to East 100th Street, between First and Second Avenues.

Called “absolutely rock-bottom” by a city official in TheNew York Times that year, East 100th Street was further summed up as “overcrowded, notably unsanitary, ridden with crime and narcotics addiction, it is a microcosm of the worst conditions and worst elements of the city.”

A 1968 New York feature reported that residents held a funeral march for the tenements on the block, “so neglected they were virtually uninhabitable.”

Photographer Bruce Davidson shot a series of black and white photos on East 100th Street chronicling the stark poverty (at right, from 1966).

Today, some tenements appear to have been razed, but a row remains, as you can see on Google.

West 84th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam may be a little bit shabby by current standards—but it’s a pretty decent Upper West Side block.

Not so in 1961, when the Times awarded it “worst block” status after a 400-resident riot one summer grabbed the city’s attention.

The Times described West 84th as “the gathering place of drunks, narcotics addicts, and sexual perverts.”

The city’s solution: raze tenements and move residents to new housing projects.